In general, an electronic component using a ceramic material, such as a capacitor, an inductor, a piezoelectric element, a varistor, a thermistor, or the like, includes a ceramic body formed of a ceramic material, internal electrodes provided inside the ceramic body, and external electrodes provided on surfaces of the ceramic body and respectively connected to the internal electrodes.
Among multilayer ceramic electronic components, a multilayer ceramic capacitor includes a plurality of laminated dielectric layers, internal electrodes disposed to oppose each other with the dielectric layer interposed therebetween, and external electrodes electrically connected to internal electrodes.
Multilayer ceramic capacitors have been widely used as components in mobile communications devices such as computers, personal data assistants (PDAs), mobile phones, and the like, due to advantages thereof such as compactness, high capacitance, ease of mounting, and the like.
With the recent trend toward high performance and lightweight, thinness, shortness, and small size of electronic devices, electronic components have also been required to have a small size, high performance, and ultrahigh capacitance.
According to high capacitance and miniaturization of a multilayer ceramic capacitor, there is need for a technique to significantly increase capacitance per unit volume.
In the case of an internal electrode, high capacitance should be implemented by increasing the number of laminations, achieved by significantly decreasing the volume of the internal electrode while significantly increasing an area of the internal electrode.
Due to high capacitance and miniaturization of a multilayer ceramic capacitor, securing reliability, in detail, moisture-resistance reliability is becoming an important issue.